Elementary Level Teaching Through FTCE

The Importance of Taking FTCE

The FTCE comprises of a set of examinations that potential teachers
have to pass, in order to practice teaching as a profession in the
schools of Florida. The certification is awarded to successful
candidates by the Bureau of Educator Certification of Florida’s
Department of Education. Taking the test is important for all teaching
aspirants of Florida, including those who are aspiring to teach
students of theElementary Education K-6 level because it is
mandatory for them to possess a temporary or professional BEC educator
certification, in order to pursue a career in teaching.

Elementary Education K-6

The test is taken by teaching professionals, who want to teach in
elementary schools of Florida. This examination consists of these
tests:
Language Arts and Reading; Social Science; Fine Arts (Music and Visual
Arts), Physical Education and Health; Science and Technology, and
Mathematics. Each of these FTCE K-6 content areas constitutes 20 % of
this test and there are 225 questions to be answered, with each section
having
45 questions. Each question comes with multiple-choice answers,
with 4 answering alternatives. This test is scored on a range of
100-300 and to pass in this, one needs to secure a minimum of 200.

Strategies for Taking the FTCE

Be thorough with your preparation- Though the test is
meant for testing elementary level knowledge, the range of syllabus
covered by it is exhaustive. Besides, one has to be conversant with the
elementary level technical vocabulary of Florida schools. One should be
aware of alphabet pragmatics, phonological jargon, syntax, schema, and
alphabetic principles. The knowledge of the technical vocabulary of the
K-6 level is of immense importance in this examination.

Give equal importance to all the sections- All the
sections of the test are equally important and one cannot afford to
ignore any section.
One has to study for each content area with great attention. However,
if one finds difficulties in certain sections, one can always take the
help an expert for the test preparation. However, the test taker should
not ignore any of the content areas, as passing in all of them and that
too with a high score, is very important.

Attempt all questions- One of the better ways to answer
the questions of the examination is to attempt all questions, as this
test does not have negative marking for the wrongly answered questions.
To save time, the candidate can first attempt the questions that he/she
finds easy, and then attempt the difficult questions. However, it is
important for one to attempt all questions because one might just get the correct answers by guessing.

Take a disciplined approach to prepare for the examination-
Essentially, a
candidate should aim to answer a large number of questions correctly in
a short period of time. This requires clear understanding of the
subjects and concepts and their practice, which can be attained by
consistent and systematic study.

The FTCE, in general, consists of 3 categories of subtests:

General Knowledge Tests- This category has subtests that assess a candidate’s basic skills of English language and Mathematics. They consist
of questions with multiple-choice answers for all sections, except for
the Essay section, which requires one to write an essay on a given topic.

The four subtests of this section are:

English Language Skills- with a passing score of 73%

Essay- with a passing score of 6/12

Reading- with a passing score of 65%

Mathematics- with a passing score of 58%

Professional Education Test- This section specifies a minimum passing score of 73%. It tests the teaching aptitude of the candidates.

Subject Area Tests-
The passing scores for the individual subject area tests vary. This
section tests the skills of an examinee in separate academic subjects,
based on the permission of the BEC.

Conclusion

The examination requires the candidates to have profound knowledge in a number of subjects. The test takers
can improve their academic knowledge by perfecting the art of general
awareness and by taking specialized coaching for this examination.